Can You Combine Creatine With Pre-Exercise? Science Defined

If you happen to’re critical about gaining muscle and power, you in all probability take creatine and pre-workout.

Nonetheless, you will have heard that taking these two dietary supplements collectively is a foul concept since they counteract one another’s performance-enhancing advantages. 

Is that this true? Are you able to combine pre-workout with creatine? Or is it counterproductive?

The quick and slightly unsatisfying reply is it relies upon—components such because the elements in your pre-workout and whether or not you’re loading creatine play a component.

On this article, you’ll study what science says about mixing creatine with pre-workout. You’ll additionally uncover the distinction between these dietary supplements, one of the best time to take creatine, and extra. 

Creatine vs. Pre-Exercise: What’s the Distinction?

Creatine and pre-workout are two dietary dietary supplements used to spice up athletic efficiency. Due to this similarity, many individuals suppose they’re the identical.

In actuality, nonetheless, creatine and pre-workout are fairly totally different. 

Creatine

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound composed of the amino acids L-arginine, glycine, and methionine.  

Your kidneys and liver produce creatine, and you too can soak up it from meals like purple meat, fish, and eggs. Your physique shops this creatine in your muscular tissues, the place it helps generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the first supply of mobile power. 

Creatine dietary supplements, similar to creatine powder and creatine gummies, are in style amongst athletes and gymgoers as a result of they’ve quite a few muscle-building and performance-enhancing advantages. 

Particularly, they increase power and energy, speed up muscle progress, enhance endurance, improve restoration, and extra. 

Pre-Exercise

Pre-workout often incorporates a mixture of elements, similar to caffeine, theanine, citrulline malate, and beta-alanine.

Can You Combine Creatine With Pre-Exercise?

In case your pre-workout is caffeine-free, there’s seemingly no draw back to combining it with creatine. 

But when your pre-workout incorporates caffeine, issues get extra difficult.

On the floor, combining creatine and pre-workout containing caffeine looks like a no brainer: creatine boosts power, energy, and endurance, whereas caffeine enhances focus and power. 

And since they work in numerous methods—creatine will increase ATP manufacturing, whereas caffeine stimulates the central nervous system—you’d anticipate them to enrich one another completely.

However analysis exhibits that’s not at all times the case.

4 excessive–high quality research have regarded on the results of blending creatine with caffeine throughout a creatine “loading section” (a interval if you take a big every day dose of creatine to assist it accumulate in your muscle sooner).

Right here’s a abstract of their outcomes:

Surprisingly, whereas three research confirmed that creatine alone boosted efficiency, none reported constructive results when folks mixed creatine with caffeine.

Scientists are nonetheless uncertain why that is, however there are two main theories:

1. Creatine helps muscular tissues calm down sooner, which lets you generate excessive quantities of power shortly and repeatedly. Conversely, caffeine slows this course of, which can negate creatine’s advantages.
2. Taking massive doses of each dietary supplements may cause gastrointestinal points that make it exhausting to carry out at your finest.

Whereas these outcomes are fascinating, we will’t essentially apply them to folks taking smaller doses of caffeine and creatine, particularly since analysis additionally exhibits that utilizing caffeine instantly after a creatine loading section has a constructive influence on athletic efficiency.

Furthermore, research have proven that pre-workout dietary supplements containing caffeine and creatine can enhance train efficiency and muscle progress.

Nonetheless, the dietary supplements in these research additionally included different performance-boosting and muscle-building elements, similar to beta-alanine and whey protein, making it unclear what produced the advantages—the creatine, caffeine, or the mix of all of the elements.

A 2022 examine revealed within the Journal of Dietary Dietary supplements provides one other twist.

It discovered that weightlifters taking creatine alone gained quad muscle, whereas these combining it with caffeine didn’t. Nonetheless, the distinction in muscle progress was small, and the creatine-only group didn’t outperform the placebo in every other measure, together with general muscle acquire, power, or endurance.

Given these outcomes, it’s exhausting to argue that caffeine definitively interferes with creatine’s advantages. If caffeine actually decreased creatine’s effectiveness, the creatine group ought to have outperformed the placebo throughout all metrics—however that wasn’t the case.

Conclusion

Ought to You Take Creatine Earlier than or After Your Exercise?

There’s no profit to taking creatine proper earlier than you prepare. In contrast to caffeine, creatine doesn’t provide you with a right away power increase or sharpen your focus. As an alternative, it really works by increase in your muscular tissues over time.

Due to this fact, a prudent strategy is to take pre-workout and creatine individually. For instance, take your pre-workout 30-to-60 minutes earlier than coaching, then take your creatine along with your post-workout meal or protein shake.

This fashion, you maximize the advantages of each dietary supplements with none potential interference.

Or, if that doesn’t suit your schedule, take creatine at any time that works for you—simply keep away from combining it with hefty doses of caffeine.

FAQ #1: Is creatine the identical as pre-workout?

Pre-workout dietary supplements, then again, are blends of a number of elements like caffeine, beta-alanine, and l-citrulline, designed to boost focus, power, endurance, and general exercise efficiency.

Sure, you may take additional creatine, nevertheless it won’t be mandatory. 

Most pre-workout powders include a small quantity of creatine—often not sufficient to achieve the optimum every day dose of 3-to-5 grams. In case your pre-workout has lower than this quantity, including additional creatine might help make sure you get all the advantages. 

Likewise, if you happen to’re loading creatine or wish to take the next dose, additional creatine could also be essential to hit your goal.  

FAQ #3: Does creatine provide you with power like pre-workout?